


Consigned to Fire (five easy pieces)

by sevendials



Category: Weiss Kreuz
Genre: Angst, Doomed Relationship, Gen, M/M, Minor Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-27
Updated: 2006-06-26
Packaged: 2017-10-21 03:37:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/220486
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sevendials/pseuds/sevendials
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Deception takes two: without trust there can be no betrayal. Ken learns his lessons the hard way. A series of vignettes about Ken, Kase and their troubled and troubling relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Consigned to Fire

**Author's Note:**

> The Obligatory Disclaimer And Stuff: Weiss Kreuz, it's characters, indices and any other related niceties I may have forgotten to mention are very much the property of Kyoko Tsuchiya, Koyasu Takehito, Project Weiss, TV Tokyo, Movic, several other US companies whose names I can't begin to guess at and probably the cat. I appropriate them only for the sake of a bit of fangirl fun and promise I'll give them back as soon as I'm done. No profit is being made or ever will be made from this smorgasbord of Ken-related scribble for fairly obvious reasons, though hopefully it will at least serve to divert other fanthings aside from the one who wrote it.  
> Author's Notes: It's a one-shot with chapters in! This was originally going to be an actual proper fic with a plot and stuff, but something happened and it turned into a series of five (well, five and a bit) loosely-connected and somewhat experimental vignettes of varying lengths set at various points in the Weiss Kreuz timeline – which points precisely I'm hoping will be quite obvious – focusing on Ken and his somewhat complicated relationship with Kase. Naturally enough, this led to the fic taking about fifty times as long to complete as it would if I'd actually been writing a continuous story, to the extent that I didn't expect I'd ever finish it and actually came close to deleting it a couple of times… Note that the opening vignette is meant to be in the second person, but I've rewritten it so as not to contravene the ban on second-person fics. No major content warnings save a little non-explicit slash (don't tell me you've never thought it), a moderate amount of cursing and a metric tonne of angst.

The first lie they tell you is that you’ve survived.

At first there is nothing but gray and an unbearable heaviness of being and a feeling of disconnection and, somewhere a million miles away, a voice talking comforting nonsense. The voice is a woman’s and it tells you you’re still living and you’ve been badly burnt and it’s over, you’re safe. You’re alive. Not that there’s anything to prove it when even breathing’s no longer an issue, when all you have to do is be. Survival hardly seems worth it.

For a while you’re convinced it’s a joke: you remember, though your memories are scalding and smoke-choked and painful to the touch, just enough to know there’s no way you could have lived, never mind have come out the other end relatively intact.

You’re no phoenix. But it easy to know what you’re not.

It takes a while for it to really register with you, as reality slips in around the edges of that intense nothingness and the shifting colors and patterns of the world come creeping slowly back, that the voice is a nurse’s, and the nothing drug-induced, and you’re only in hospital after all. Which is when you start to believe them, and you make the first mistake.

Which is when, as life renews its claim on you and you start, tentatively at first, to come to terms with your own survival, it kind-of sinks in that you’re not supposed to be doing anything of the sort. You’re meant to be dead. Someone wanted you dead. You’re supposed to be out of the picture and you catch yourself wondering if they’ve found out that you’re not, and so you permit yourself to start to worry again. Permit yourself to be something other than grateful, and hopelessly, pathetically so, to be anything at all. It would be easier for everyone if you were dead. You’re _supposed_ to be dead. But you’re not dead. You’re alive. What happens now? What are you meant to do?

You don’t know it’s not even an issue.

You don’t know you were right first time.

Later, when you’ve recovered a little and you’re no longer seeing the world through a mist of pharmaceuticals, and you know you’re getting better because you’re feeling so much worse, they ask if you remember what happened to you and if you know where you were injured. Somehow it’s a strange kind of relief to know it’s your back that’s the issue and even that’s being sorted and, though you know it won’t ever look that pretty, you catch yourself thinking well, it could be worse. It’s not like you’ll really have to see the worst of the damage. It’s not like anyone else will if you keep your top on.

Oh, when it comes to the details they’re honest enough, once you’ve worked out the codes, but what else could they be when veracity’s only a glance in the mirror away? And you don’t think to question the first lie.

In time, they tell you the truth.

You’re already dead.


	2. Consigned to Fire

The first time they kissed it was almost an accident.

Sat in Kase's bedroom on a wet autumn afternoon with practice cancelled and nothing for it but to kill time and neither of them very good at being indoors. It was easy to waste time with a whole world to do it in but with four white walls, a desk, a bed, time dragged. The windows were closed. The door was closed. Being in that cool, cuboid room felt like being packed away and stored but it wasn't like there was anywhere better to be, or anything better to do.

Ken studied his friend's unremarkable life with the careful air of a tourist. Just as anything was better than nothing, anything beat going back.

He stayed out too often. Small wonder when he constantly seemed to find trouble. For breaking curfew, for talking back, for yawning during prayers or cursing or running in the corridors or any damned thing at all. He was restless. Bored. Tired of petty regulations, institutional food, religion as a reflex and God held up as the answer to everything. He missed his parents in a vague, halfhearted kind of way, though that was a reflex too. It didn't really mean anything any more. He couldn't remember what _family_ had been like anyway… Ken didn't see how any of it was relevant though, tenacious by nature, he at least kept trying. He still couldn't believe the Virgin Mary gave a shit if his room was untidy. Surely the Holy Mother had better things to worry about than Ken Hidaka's messy floor? She'd been a mother herself.

He'd always liked Kase's home. Always been nothing but happy to be invited there. Small, crowded, comfortable, it seemed to Ken the essence of what a home should be. Kase's mother, a woman who seemed as much a part of the furniture as the couch and the stove, was tall and slim and fadedly pretty and to Ken's mind, imprecisely attuned as it was to his own elusive memories and more potent cliché, she hardly looked like a mother at all though at least she smelt of baking. Whatever time Kase brought him round there always seemed to be something on the stove and, when he tried to remember her later on, Ken found he couldn't picture her without her apron, or the spotted headscarf she pulled back her short and fading hair with.

It had been an accident, almost; the kiss felt accidental. Clumsy. They both knew it wasn't meant to happen, that it _shouldn't_ have happened and yet it felt only inevitable, like it was something they'd planned long ago.

And a dog was barking outside, an isolated string of sound. The rain pattered idly on the windowpanes as if it, too, had nowhere better to be. Smiling, Kase draw back and Ken blushed and pushed him backward and, though he didn't do it hard, it was quite hard enough to tell his friend he had meant it and they'd tried to argue over whose fault it was but it had all been far too embarrassing to _think_ about, never mind to apportion blame for, and they'd decided to pretend it hadn't happened.

Ken was twelve.

He hadn't really liked it much.

The second time they kissed it was during an argument.

He'd been angry about – same old thing as always. They'd been arguing a lot lately. Kase had inherited a girlfriend, kind of, from Christ alone knew where. Ken didn't like her. Seeing the pair of them together left him feeling irritated and resentful and weirdly twisted up inside. He didn't get it, couldn't see the attraction. The girl was, he supposed, cute enough, with some stupidly common name Ken, whether by accident or ill-will, had never quite managed to get straight, but she really shouldn't have been Kase's type and it bewildered Ken that nonetheless she was. They'd been arguing about her, about Kase's new, unsettling habit of folding himself away with her – just the two of them. Ken resented it and resented her, the intruder, and something in him said he didn't really want to know why.

He was skipping practice and Ken was sick of covering for him. Ken was as pissed as their coach was.

Ken hadn't given _girlfriends_ a second thought. There were better things to think about. If he were to be entirely honest with himself, Ken couldn't really see the point of girls. Kase needed to get his goddamn act together. If he wasn't going to take it seriously, why bother turning up at all?

Privately, Ken gave it another six weeks. He shouldn't have made that thought public. Shouldn't have told Kase. Kase had grabbed him by the shoulders, grasping them hard enough to bruise and Ken, strong for fourteen but deceptively slender, still obstinately erring on the short side of average and resenting his classmates' growth spurts, had thought his friend was going to hit him. He was already primed to return the compliment when Kase kissed him.

(Bless me Father for I have sinned…)

And it wasn't like the first one at all.

The first time they kissed it had been nothing at all; a hesitant thing, a mere brush of lips, the kind of thing a parent might do to a child. This time the kiss was forceful, demanding and easily hard enough to bruise. This time Kase commanded him to surrender and didn't care if Ken was in no mood to offer him that. Ken felt it like a theft from himself. Felt his eyes go wide and his muscles tense as if bracing against a blow. It tore the breath from him, it left him with nothing to do but glare at Kase in furious silence, left him bewildered and gasping and slightly frightened and surely that couldn't be right? He'd hated Kase way back when, back when it all began. _Hated_ him. Absolutely _despised_ the guy—

Freed, Ken had wiped his mouth as if hoping to drive away the feel of him, the taste of him and he backed up a pace or two, his posture defensive and his eyes dark with fury. He'd rather the guy had decked him, or tried to (fights he could handle, but this?). What was he trying to prove? What the fuck was _that_ for, Kase?

You don't have to be jealous, Ken, Kase had said with a small, strange smile Ken didn't think he remembered seeing on his lips before, and Ken had punched him. He didn't know what the big deal was over kisses.

He'd walked back alone, slowly, hands deep in his pockets. Seething.

The third time – after a match, alone in the locker room and Ken searching for a misplaced glove, a glove which Kase later revealed to have hidden himself – it only felt natural.

After that, it was just something they did.

The significance of it didn't really sink in until later.

Thinking about it afterward, thinking about them if of course there was a _them_ to think about, Ken (lying on his front in a bed which could never be his, chin resting on his crossed wrists as he gazed into nothing at all) felt only confused and abandoned and desperately miserable and wondered where Kase was, and just when they'd first slipped tentatively over the line, and why even now it was hard to think of Kase as anything other than – it's a friendship, Ken. You understand that, don't you? Well, didn't he? Ken wasn't sure he did, wasn't sure he understood anything though he'd nodded and smiled and said, at the time, of course.

(Sure. It's friendship. It's whatever you want it to be, Kase, as long as it's not nothing at all…)

But he thought, and he could hardly help but to do so, what kind of a friendship could ever have admitted to this and why did it have to feel like second best? How could Kase take so much from him, taking so much of it for granted, and give him nothing in return?

And him shamed and frightened and horribly alone, presumed guilty never mind his innocence, knowing in his heart it was already over and pointless to hope otherwise. It almost made him wish he had done it after all since it didn't matter any that he hadn't. All protesting his innocence had done was convince _them_ he was beyond salvation, clinging to lies even when caught in deception… Ken had never had much; now all he had was Kase. He wasn't even sure he had him.

Damned for sure. Their blood shall be upon them.

They'll believe you. They've got to. You're telling the truth.  
No, no they won't, they've already made their minds up, they don't _care_ who did it, they just want someone to blame!  
Ken, you… shit, _listen_ to yourself! You're _crazy_!  
I'm _not_ fucking _crazy_! Oh God, oh God what am I going to _do_?

It wasn't – the thought came upon him treacherous but undeniable – no, it really _wasn't_ worth it. Not for… what? Twenty minutes of lunacy, trapped with one another and something searing and demanding, something born of fury and despair and frank terror and the loss of control, loss of everything (it wasn't me, I swear it wasn't me, why won't anyone listen!); the line crossed and forgotten (Will you just, will you – fuck it, Ken, get a grip on yourself!), and a sharp stinging pain across one cheek and Kase's hands seizing his wrists and trying to pull away and failing, and falling to land on something that yielded softly beneath him and this isn't _right_ , Kase… pleading for Christ alone knew what, crying out in consenting pain…

And nothing, now, to show for it. Nothing but guilt and a dull ache inside and it's a friendship, Ken. You understand that, don't you… but Ken didn't. He didn't understand at all. He wasn't like that, Kase wasn't like that either, Ken had nearly cried all the same—

—or maybe not even then.

Maybe the first time he really allowed himself to think about Kase, the first time Ken actually wondered where it all began, was after it all had ended.


	3. Heterodoxy

The day he left the unit, the woman with no face smiled at him.

Ken didn't know what had happened to her, or what she used to look like, or how long she had been there. He didn't even know how old she was, this individual with the countenance of a melted doll and the skin stretched taut and unyielding over the ruined planes of her face, who was young and female only by her clothes. He simply knew her name (Noriko) and that sometimes she sold newspapers, and she made him feel desperately ashamed. The closest they'd come to conversation was the day they exchanged forenames, and Ken had blushed because he was sixteen years old and there was nothing visibly wrong with him.

She bared her teeth at him as he sat, fully-dressed in clothes he couldn't remember owning and looking more like a visitor than a patient, on one of the couches in the day room, and he understood that was all that remained of her smile. Ken realized she could hardly have been that much older than he was and that once upon a time she might well have been pretty, too pretty to look twice at a boy as entirely unremarkable as Ken, and he wondered what she would have had to say to him if he hadn't been too embarrassed to look at her, still less try to talk. Who _was_ she?

He didn't speak when Erika arrived. He wanted to tell her he'd changed his mind and, when she stooped and picked up the plastic bag resting by his feet, he nearly didn't get up and follow her, but what else was there for him to do? Ken didn't have any choice and he knew it.

It couldn't have worked out neater if it had been planned deliberately and who knew, perhaps it was.

(And he hadn't used to be a conspiracy theorist but honestly, what was he supposed to think?)

This woman was beautiful, in a rather hard-faced way. She had long red hair that constantly threatened to tumble into her face and was an invitation to some man, any man – not Ken; he already knew there were some girls guys like him didn't even aspire to – to reach out and brush it away, exposing her porcelain complexion and a face so lovely it could have been painted by an artist, yet her brisk, maternal manner immediately discouraged it. In spite of her curves she was angular. She was, Ken knew, a hard woman and she frightened him a lot more than the woman with no face could have ever done.

He wanted to duck back into the unit and hide behind the young nurse with the plump forearms who reminded him of Sister Anne though she wasn't even on duty that day – and, now that he finally came to think about it, it worried him that he saw the nuns in the nurses and it never even occurred to him to try and find his mother there.

Erika smiled and it was beautiful and something dark and primal whispered at Ken, _run_.

(She smiled like a succubus – or was it an incubus? He couldn't remember which one was female. It occurred to Ken that what Erika was offering him was a seduction of sorts, and just briefly he caught himself thinking of Kase.)

Ken grinned at Erika only because she mustn't know how much, at that moment, he hated her.

Though she was giving him only what he wanted. He knew, he just knew it was really none of his business; it wasn't his place to judge, he should leave it to God to sort out (if there was a God, if he'd even believed all that crap in the first place, if Ken Hidaka had ever been the kind who could live for the promise of jam tomorrow) but he couldn't do that. Couldn't just stand idle while . Yeah, so it would be sorted out eventually (perhaps, perhaps), but it would be kind of nice to think there was some kind of justice out there on Earth, too…

Of course Ken knew temptation when he saw it. He understood that Erika was playing with him just as her bosses played with her, but at least he knew she was and that made all the difference. Better to be manipulated knowingly and Hell, at least someone out there still thought he was useful, worth manipulating in the first place. It wasn't like Ken had anywhere else to go. _Have you ever heard of an organization named Kritiker?_

It wasn't like there was anyone much to miss him.

What about my family ?  
We'll make sure they have something to mourn.  
Promise?

So he stood, and brushed non-existent dust from the seat of his jeans, conscious as he did so that they hung far too loosely about his hips (he must have lost weight in hospital), and let Erika take him away. Stepped forward blindly into – what?

(Ken had no idea about that. He still wasn't sure he believed a word of it. It sounded too ridiculous for words. How could the world think he was dead when here he was? As for all the rest of it, as for the _Kritiker_ bit – come on, secret societies with silly names, vigilante justice? It sounded stupid, like a kid's game or something out of some bizarreo manga that he could only half-believe in while reading it, and not at all on cold reflection…)

But what else was he supposed to do? He could hardly have turned Erika down and there was, Ken supposed, nothing wrong with mutual manipulation. They had something to offer him, too; parable of the stick and carrot. Erika couldn't give him his life back but she could give him something (because he had to belong somewhere, everyone had to belong somewhere) and maybe if he hung on, if he asked the right questions and looked in the right places and had patience – and he could learn to be patient – he'd find out what had happened to him and why. They, whoever they were, had ruined him: turnabout was fair play, right?

And there was Kase, too. No, the nurses had said, they brought you in alone. They didn't find anyone else, just you. What were you doing there, honey? And maybe, Erika added as if it hardly mattered at all, with the playfully knowing smile of someone promising a child a surprise before bedtime, you'll find out what happened. It's the kind of thing we specialize in. All you have to do is say yes, Ken. Trust me, you won't last five minutes alone. The way things stand, it's in your best interests to stay dead. Kritiker can see to it that you do…

He hardly believed it— but someday, Ken promised, for both of them. Someday, he would find out how, and why, and who.

And, someday, he would make them all pay for it.


	4. Between the Lines

He says, "It tasted funny."

He sounds surprised and yet there's triumph in his surprise, as if he's a scientist who stumbled upon something amazing in the specimen tray he was about to throw in the trash. And he frowns and looks down at the glass in his hand as if he can't quite work out what he's doing with it and I know he's started to think about it.

What tasted funny, Ken?

He says, "The water did. It tasted kinda flat."

Flat? But it's water, Ken. Water always tastes flat. It's always been that way. I, I tell him like he was a stupid little kid and I was his dad, don't know what he thinks he's talking about and I don't think he does either, and he frowns like he knows I'm lying. I should have remembered Ken knows me too well. I should have remembered how worryingly _good_ he is at knowing bullshit when he hears it. I know I can fool him and still he sees right through me: go figure that.

"Don't be a dumbass, Kase. It didn't taste _right_ is what I mean. Where'd you get it?"

And he's got that look in his eyes and I realize I'm thinking, oh, crap.

Ken's not stupid. No matter what people say about him he's far from stupid. He doesn't ever look sharp and normally he doesn't act it, but there's always been something about him a guy overlooks only at his own risk and I know I've overlooked it and it feels like – basically a flaw. It's a break in the scheme. It could, today or next week or two years down the line, ruin everything. Ken isn't smart, he could never be smart, but he's clever all the same and it's a problem.

I'm beginning to wonder if maybe I want him to be stupid, because if all he is is an idiot then it's more his fault than mine; his fault for believing in me, his fault for being so goddamned naïve, all his fault for making any of this possible in the first place – his fault for making it easy but he isn't. I thought he would. It was going to be so easy. He's disappointing me again. He's getting good at that.

The one thing I can say, the only thing I can think of to say, is you think someone was trying to get at you? And I try to sound disbelieving. I try to make the idea sound ridiculous, like something out of some kind of cheesy sport comic, the kind of thing we'd used to read together only for the sake of laughing over the inaccuracies and how _stupid_ it all was. Isn't the game dramatic enough, Ken had said or might have done, or maybe it was me who said that… I want to remind him of all that and more. I want to embarrass him out of suspicion because they never said they wouldn't hurt him, but another of the problems with Ken (and believe me, there are plenty of problems with Ken) is he's gotten used to embarrassment, or rather it's gone way past the point where he can be upset by _me_ trying to embarrass him.

Ken looks up. His eyes are serious, his face perfectly grave. All he says is, "Yes."

And I remember he's always been unexpected, and he's smarter than he looks, and that he's Ken and he's my friend and he's just a kid and it's not going to be easy at all. Why did I think it would be? It's going to be much harder than I thought. It's going to be impossibly hard.

And I know I'm going to do it anyway, but I shouldn't have to keep reminding myself I hate him.

I hate him.

I tell myself that and it sounds good. It sounds right. It sounds like something I think I could start to believe in. I tell myself that I didn't used to hate him and it's his fault I hate him now and I think I can believe in that, too. I tell myself I hate Ken because I have to hate Ken: why else would I have wanted to destroy him?

I say, he's in my way. I say, he's showing me up. Ken makes me look bad.

Part of me says, you shouldn't have to talk yourself into this, but I'm not doing that. I know I'm not doing that. It's his fault he won and he didn't even goddamn _notice_. We've been competing since we were kids, all the time, always, and it wouldn't ever have mattered if Ken hadn't had to go and win and Christ, I hate him for that. How could he have won? He never used to be able to beat me. Why can he do it now and make it look easy, so easy he didn't realize he'd won? I can't keep up with him and he thinks nothing's changed, Ken still thinks he's chasing _my_ shadow or at any rate he did… But I'm not playing this game any more.

I can't have what you've got, so I don't see why you should have it either. If I'm going to fall, you're coming with me.

You said we'd stay together, right, Ken?

I suppose I thought that if he lost everything I could forgive him for daring to outgrow me. For being better. For people calling him a prodigy while I was the perpetual substitute, third-rate talent, just another not-quite-good-enough who'd no doubt have an undistinguished career and end up teaching a classful of bored middle school kids who'd rather be playing baseball or watching anime how to kick a ball while he moved further and further away from me… how could I forgive him that?

But it's hard, hating him's harder work than I thought it'd be. They never said they wouldn't hurt him. Never. Not even at the beginning, when I said – I can't remember what I said. I know, though, I would have said something like I didn't want to see him hurt. I must have said something like that. But I had to stop him, didn't I? I wanted him embarrassed, yes. Shown up, betrayed and never even guessing it, _ruined_ … I just didn't want to hear anything else about how talented he was. Bad enough he was better in the first place without everyone going on about how great he was, too. And Christ, he was so _nice_ about it, and that only made it worse.

Yeah, they've only done what I wanted and asked for but even now I don't want them to do anything to him, well not anything permanent, and even now they won't promise me it's not going to come to that. Hidaka, it's over. You're finished; why won't you accept it? Forget it. Get out of my life. Just disappear. Nothing else will happen if you just disappear.

(Don't make this harder than it has to be.)

But of course Ken won't do that.

Guess I forgot how stubborn he could be, too. Guess I was crazy to think he'd walk away smiling. I keep telling him that, _let go_ , and the harder I try and convince him to let it lie, the harder he clings. Ken's dreams don't die easy.

"This didn't just _happen_ , Kase," he says, for what feels like the thousandth time and for the thousandth time I say, let it go, but he ignores me, he looks away and there's something in his eyes that says how angry he is with me – now that's new, the anger is. He's been angry about this before, but he never used to get angry at me. He used to make a point of telling me it _wasn't_ me he was mad at, so why's he started now? Maybe he's gotten… "I mean, they think I got the money and I didn't but there must have been some money in this somewhere, so where's it gone? I damn sure didn't get it—" and he's gazing at the paving now, hands buried in his pockets, his brows twisted in thought, "—so who did?"

You really want to know that, Ken?

"What the Hell do you think?"

Okay, I say, and I get that sinking feeling even as I do (loose cannon, Ken. He's turning into a liability and they don't like liabilities. They're… not they. We. There's a _we_ in this and it doesn't involve him, not any more. He won't get out the picture so we're going to have to make him leave and I don't want to, I just want him gone but I've come too far, I haven't any choice and that's hardly my fault, is it?) okay, I'm with you. You want to go it alone. Look, Ken, I say, and I'm feigning uncertainty and I hope I'm doing it well enough to convince him because although I can fool him I can't, are you sure that's such a great idea? Can't we just leave it? The official investigation—

"Official investigation?" he repeats, glaring up at me from the corners of his eyes. "The _official_ explanation is _I_ did it! _Bullshit_ , Kase! Someone out there's wrecked my goddamn life and unless I do something they're going to get away with it! Of course I want to know who did this! And I want to know why the Hell _me_ , too!"

Shit. Hidaka, you're an idiot. Do you really think I'd tell you that?

I've got to draw the line somewhere. I can't have him know that. I won't let Ken die knowing I hate him. For what we've got planned I need him trusting – and I guess I've taken enough from him already. What does it matter if he never finds out what happened? He's got to go anyway. Hell, I figure I might as well leave the poor kid _something_.

It's weird of me, but now he's not going to be in my way any more I can almost feel fond about him again. All I've done is put things back the way they were. Tonight I almost think he'd understand why, if I told him, Hell, I almost want to tell him. I want to share this with him, it'd be like we were kids again, sharing secrets by torchlight; it's stupid but actually I kinda miss that. Hey, Ken, guess what?

"Kase," he says, and he smiles.

I can't help myself. I smile back. I say, let's go.

And although I'm prepared for it and I know there's nothing else for it, the funny thing is I'm panicking when I feel them grab me and he just watches. Ken simply looks at me in total incomprehension like on some level he's failed, and failed utterly, to understand. I'm more afraid than he is but I know what's coming – he's just confused, too confused to remember he should be scared. I hear myself screaming ( _Ken_ ; I'm shouting _Ken_ ) and I realize I mean it. He calls something I can't catch, though it's probably my name, and I think I see him start to pull away then someone grabs at him, pulls him back and I guess he must have fallen: he's swallowed up by their bodies and the darkness and he's finished, gone.

Killed. It's only now it's too broke to fix I realize this feels wrong. I didn't want that to be the last I had of Ken, but how could I have made this better and still had him believe? And he has to believe. I won't let him know how much I want to hate him.

I wish I could switch him off and forget him. I wish he didn't matter after all.

They let me go, of course, when we reach the corridor and as I stagger away from them rubbing my arms I realize I'm straining to hear – something, anything. What's happening back there? I can't tell. No way of knowing when there's nothing to hear. It's all gone quiet; I'm not going to get any more out of this and I think I'm glad. He'll be out cold, or dead already. He must have gone down easily after all. It's no surprise. Ken's a stubborn kid, but he _is_ only a kid. What could he do against men like this?

One of them is laughing, and his laughter is obnoxiously loud and hollow and absolutely fake. He's clapping me on the back and telling me I'm quite an actor and I swat his hand away, pushing him from me and heading for the door. Head up, eyes front and Christ, I think I'm going to be sick. I really do think I'm going to be sick and I realize I only wanted Ken to vanish. I wanted him gone, not dead. I wanted him to not show up one day and then again the next and I wanted it to have nothing to do with me. That I could have handled; I don't know if I can handle him beaten and burned to death. No – shit, is that me talking? It doesn't sound like me. It doesn't sound like anyone – I don't want to watch. I, I realize, can't do that.

(And, somewhere to the back of my mind, he shoves me away from him and says indignantly, _what the Hell did you do that for?_ He's twelve. He's blushing. I don't know why I thought this would be easy…)

Already I can feel heat at my back. I want to shout, I've changed my mind, but I don't. God help me, I keep quiet.

( _… Kase,_ he says softly – he's about eight years old and he's pale, dull-eyed with grief and somehow extinguished, hardly my friend Ken at all – _you won't go anywhere, will you?_ )

Christ, Ken, why'd you make me do this? It's you or me, don't ask me why.

I told myself I wouldn't look, so why am I turning round? I don't want to see, I don't want to have to think, I did this. I don't want to know where Ken's gone. It's not my fault, I tell myself. It would have happened anyway even if I hadn't gotten involved, and I wouldn't have had the chance to save myself, to better myself. God knows the soccer was going nowhere – for me anyway, and I couldn't have let him have it. Not alone. That's never been the way it works between us.

I never realized what a frightening thing a fire could be. It's not like what you see in the movies. God, the noise, the heat, the _smell_ … what's it like from the inside? I hope he never found out. I hope they killed him first.

Ken, I'm thinking, you wanted me to be happy. You told me that. And you never wanted me to have to hate you, do you? And you know I couldn't have spent the rest of my life hating you for having something I wanted, and how the Hell was I supposed to let you have it alone? If I can't have it, neither of us can, and I know you understand that. You always understood that, right? Didn't you, Ken?

I don't understand why you still matter. You're just a dead kid I used to know.

This isn't my fault, I think as I stare into the flames, as one of them (old Kouga, I think; Ken, that's where the money went, not like that matters now) places a single heavy hand on my shoulder like he's my dad – like he's trying to remind me where I belong. This isn't my fault, Ken. It's not even yours. It's just the way things are…

"Come on," Kouga says gruffly, giving my shoulder a shake.

And as I nod and turn to follow, I tell myself the smoke is stinging my eyes.


	5. Slight Return

But it doesn't really register until the next morning.

Ken has been awake all night but the longest shower in the world and an artificially bright smile keep it from showing. He notes Omi's surprise when he's there to open up but Ken can't quite think why it should be there when Omi knows he's scheduled to work today. He's conscious of the looks on his teammates' faces and he feels fine and can hardly understand why they're staring, and so it goes until the middle of his shift. Custom slows, Youji stands, stretching luxuriously as a sleepy cat and announces his intention to slip off for a cigarette and Ken smiles at him wearily and says, just don't do it near the flowers, and that's when he realizes he has murdered Kase.

It is a mistake, a typo: Ken is used to deferring. Used to stepping back and letting Kase go first. Maybe that was only what he was doing as he stood and watched his oldest friend bleed his life out on the paving at his feet. Even in dying Kase just had to go first…

But Ken knows that isn't it at all and he can't help thinking that he is betraying Kase. Ken isn't meant to be better than him. Kase is older, taller, cleverer: he is an exemplar. A standard Ken desperately needs to live up to which is always just out of reach, and that's simply the way it _works_. Ken isn't supposed to be able to beat him, ever. He isn't supposed to get in Kase's way, want what Kase can't have.

Ken isn't supposed to be here at all but, Lazarus in Kevlar, he is. So this is resurrection.

The night before, seen through a haze of exhaustion and sudden stifling horror that clouds his mind, makes his chest feel tight and leaves a copper taint in the back of his mouth, seems surreal. It's a movie he couldn't quite follow, a story heard secondhand, something sad and frightening that happened to someone else, a friend of a friend. The ache in his ribs has nothing to do with anything, nothing to connect to. How the Hell did this happen? It had felt, how weird, it had felt like they were playing. A child's game turned lethal; Ken can't comprehend it. Bang, bang, you're dead…

It means nothing. Kase is a memory, no more real than a figure in a dream gone bad. Kase's idiosyncratic smile, the tone of his voice, the touch of his hands, the gently oppressive weight of his arm as it rests across Ken's shoulders—

Gone. Just gone.

And he thinks of Kase's mother, tall and fadedly feminine in her apron and spotted kerchief, for the first time in years.

Ken doesn't understand. He doesn't know why it has to hurt so much when he's got what he thought he wanted (and – and isn't this always the way? – now that he's got it in his hands, he really isn't sure he wants it at all). All he's done, really, is to tidy Kase away again, put everything back the way he'd always thought it went in the first place. Why is this a problem?

"Ken?" Youji says in sudden consternation. "Ken? Are you all right?"

Ken smiles stupidly at the floor tiles, at loose earth, scattered petals and the shattered lacquerware pot he can't remember picking up still less dropping, and the fatally battered corpse of the gardenia he dearly hopes he won't have to pay for, and he remembers an autumn evening when the world was cast in gentle gold and Kase losing his schoolbag and hears himself saying, "I'm fine."

And the world skews and slips sideways and there is nothing else.


	6. In the end, there is only sadness

Once upon a time there were two little boys, but Ken's too old for fairy tales and he doesn't want to believe in Kase anyway because if it hadn't been for belief he wouldn't be in this mess.

It almost _sounds_ like a fairy tale when he looks back on it. A sad, straightforward story of ambition and trust and betrayal told in the simplest of terms; there's something mythic about it, something softly unbelievable. Ken sets it in the Heian and calls Kase a vengeful ghost. Himself, an unwary young man only too eager to be taken in. All it needs is kimonos and katanas and ridiculous hairstyles in the place of the gangsters and guns…

Put it that way and he barely believes in it himself any more. Some days he can almost pretend he made Kase up.

Ken can't remember what it was to have faith. Loss in the abstract; he misses it like he would a long-dead parent, something that vanished so long ago he can't recall what it was to hold it in the first place. He can't recapture the flavor of it, can't remember what made it feel so right, so safe— it's vanished like his mother's lost embraces and the forgotten taste of childhood candy, so bland and bittersweet on an adult's lips. To so much as try to recapture it is to be rudely reminded that the moment has passed: the past is ash and loss is forever. He can't go back and pick it up again.

Ken doesn't believe. Maybe now he'll be saved.

But Ken believes in Hell, though he doesn't have to. No, Kase. We don't have to wait.

Ken barely needs the Devil when the Hell men can make all by themselves is quite bad enough. Ken has seen things, already, that make his skin creep just to think about. He's seen things in private houses in respectable neighborhoods and in gleaming, sanitary office towers that have made him feel stained for days, he's stumbled, blood-spattered and vague-eyed with horror and too shaken and strung out on sheer exhaustion to think, into the forgiving darkness and crossed himself and realized only belatedly that he isn't alone. _Divine Plan_ , Father Michael? What's divine about this? Man makes Satan look unambitious, worse, unimaginative and if you don't fear the Devil then what's the point of God? Look, Ken wants to say. Take a look at what a mess You made. Look what we've done to Your creation, all by ourselves. We don't need You two any more.

But even to think it embarrasses him. It seems a silly idea when Ken's Hell still has cool autumn evenings and comfortable cats sleeping in shafts of sunlight, and the glazed streets and sidewalks when the air is heavy with the smell after rain, and Youji's laugh.

So Ken carries on because he has to do something and he doesn't know what else to do. The store, the house, deny these dark beasts and Manx in the basement snapping on the lights, who's with me. Perhaps he'd understand what Youji saw in her if she were to smile sometimes – it's becoming routine, a habit Ken can't seem to break. He kills because they tell him he must; survives because he's good at surviving, and there's nothing else for him to do but kill and keep on living. It beats the alternatives, that's all.

( _Adaptable_ , the bearded man said in approved surprise, placing an unremarkable buff file down on the desk in front of him, and Erika smiled like a proud parent, and Ken got the feeling of himself as a pet project, as someone's _good work_ , their bonus payment. You'll do, Erika's smile is saying; why does it relieve him?)

Ken tries to believe that the past is dead and can't hurt him any more and he can't even convince himself.

He misses Kase and it feels like presumption. Ken has mourned him once already and will mourn him again and what right does he have to do that, to grieve the death of a man he killed? Grief. What a sick, fucked up reaction. Murderers have no right to miss their victims, surely? But Ken does miss him – the boy who was his friend, who had kissed him when nobody was looking and promised him that wherever they went they would go together, not the man he killed. That, he tells himself, wasn't really Kase. It wasn't Kase because it wasn't anybody, just another dark beast, just another torn, bleeding body slowly cooling on the pavement. That makes it bearable somehow, makes it both better and worse at the same time.

It can't all have been a lie, but standing in the back room – smell of damp earth, of pollen and leaf mold – an uncompleted order slip on the counter next to him and idly pockmarking a dry block of oasis with bare fingers and savoring its peculiar crisp feel, the indentations the pressure of his fingertips leave behind, Ken wonders where the faultline lies. He wonders when Kase decided to let him fall and what he did to make him, if he did anything, if he was anything but merely convenient. He wonders why he didn't notice the change (was there one?), and why he didn't try and stop it (could he have?) and if, _if_.

And he realizes Kase has become another _if only I hadn't_ , and he shivers.

When did Kase get that good at acting? When, for that matter, did Ken? Even now he can't stop smiling.

Ken lives like a contradiction in terms and he thinks of his past in the either-or terms of before and after and every fresh loss requires a redefinition, shifting of the boundaries. Before the nuns, before the fire, before death and betrayal in that order, before _Kase_ … sometimes he catches himself wondering what's going to go next, and it frightens him how little there is left to choose from. His team, his mind, himself; they're all he has now, and he doesn't know what he'll do if they go too.

Of course, he's thought that before.

Of course, if he loses his mind, he won't be able to miss it. And if he dies, he's just dead.

He misses Kase, though, and even that feels awkward and wrong because the man he killed was Kase too and it's his fault that man is dead.

(Though he probably deserves it, Ken doesn't want to die. He lies still and silent and secretly breathing, gazing at the blackness at the back of his eyes and wanting, quite desperately, to scream. The breath's been knocked out of him, he feels sick and scared and horribly alone and he can't comprehend what he's just survived, the _why_ of it hasn't really sunk in yet. In freefall, Ken prays that Kase is as arrogantly self-assured as he remembers him being and will just walk away. Absurdly, he is wondering where Kase got that stupid suit and why he wants to run a goddamn _company_ so bad he'd kill for it, and the concrete feels cool beneath his back. There's not enough blood and Ken hopes like Hell Kase doesn't know enough to realize it. Our Father Who Art in Heaven, I don't want to die…)

Sometimes Ken imagines he must have killed Kase simply for failing to live up to his expectations, for daring to be something other than the boy he grew up with. He knows it's not true, but sometimes he can't help but think it might be. Ken's got his revenge, so why isn't he happy? Why does he continue to kill though he's lost his only excuse for it? He went very wrong somewhere down the line. So did Kase.

(Finally, _finally_ Kase moves and Ken – the shop, smell of damp earth and lily pollen staining the fingertips, arguing with Youji over you've been smoking in the stockroom or you could have told me you'd moved the coffee filters or any damn thing at all, Momoe's cat walking onto Aya's newspaper and curling up to sleep, the kids in the park at dusk and I'm terribly sorry, Mrs. Sato, we lost track of time – Ken has already decided. No, Kase. I'm having it my way this time. The boundaries shift and Ken isn't going to die _convenient_ and once again it's just a job and this isn't Kase, isn't anyone, it's just another target fighting for his life because it's easier that way, because someone's got to die here and it's not going to be Ken—Hunter of light, deny this dark beast his tomorrow.)

He must have thought it a price worth paying, at the time…

So Ken moves on alone because he has already made his choice. He chose to live. He killed Kase. Those were the terms and he accepted. All he can do now is live with the consequences: Kase is dead and whatever Ken chooses to make him. He is little more than another regret, a missed opportunity, something else Ken destroyed only by clinging to it too tightly and he can't even seem to hate Kase for it…

It's a joke cracked by a God with a mean sense of humor, but the joke isn't that Kase had to die. It's only that the man who killed him had to be a man who loved him. But that's just the way things are in storybooks.

And Ken looks back on his childhood and it feels like a fairy tale, something mythic and softly unbelievable. This is how he got here and some days even he can barely bring himself to believe it. This is Ken's life, a story about resurrection without the redemptive aspect, about a young man immolated like a firebird, who burned to death and stepped from the ashes and found nothing worth surviving for. This is the tale of two little boys, who tore one another apart.

Nobody said the phoenix had to like it.

 __

-ende-


End file.
